• Published 24th Feb 2016
  • 3,940 Views, 275 Comments

Phantasmare - Emperor



The Alicorn Amulet tainted Trixie. Over time, she recovered, yet it haunts her still. Exploring Equestria, Trixie is determined to finally achieve Greatness and true power, no matter what. In Phantasia, a mare shall defy destiny.

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Midsummer

If Trixie was to pinpoint an exact moment that would be the genesis of her journey, it would have been four years ago. At the time, she had just finished a two-week gig performing nightly at the midsummer Greatest Outdoor Show in Equestria in the city of Coltgary.

Having rebounded from an unfortunate incident with a magical trinket less than a year ago, Trixie had been hesitant in accepting the offered contract, but the audiences had loved her. Being able to feed off the adulation of her crowds, and not above munching on grass and wild flowers when travelling, Trixie’s living expenses usually amounted to the materials she purchased for her fireworks and wagon maintenance. The contract fees and patron donations Trixie hauled in at Coltgary would suffice for a full year.

Stuffed, nearly bloated with energy from the vibrant excitement of the crowds during the days as the rodeos were performed, and the glee of ponies, she had decided at last to return home for the first time in over a year, with a few extra books from the stores of Coltgary to be added to her father’s library.

Wanderlust had conquered the blue-furred mare from an early age, and it had abated the sting Trixie had felt when forced to drop out of magical school as she instead travelled. Despite that, the need for home and kinship still claimed her, especially after her failings in life. Unfortunately, sojourns with those she considered her relatives never sated that lust for home.

Home for Trixie was the wheat-growing village of Whinnychester, a more ponydunk place she had never seen, but still home. It was where she had grown up, and where her father still lived.

Through refining of the energy she had gathered into physical stamina, and joining a wagon chain Trixie had encountered on one of the main roads crisscrossing Equestria, sharing a burden amongst multiple ponies in return for continuous movement while she was sleeping at night, what would normally have been a four day journey across the continent had been whittled to a mere two and a half. It was the middle of summer, and tourists and businessponies alike were busy, many of them taking to far-flung towns not serviced by train.

Every time Trixie saw a new wagon, however, ache gnawed at her heart once more even as it inspired her at seeing other ponies with the freedom to go wherever they chose. The last time she had returned to Whinnychester, Trixie’s father had helped her to build a new cart following the destruction of her old one during the Ursa incident in Ponyville. The new cart had lasted less than three months before it had been destroyed by vandals who had heard about said incident. Her lack of money at the time and inability to build a new wagon from scratch by herself had led her to working on a rock farm, and from there it had all gone downhill faster for Trixie than greased wheels on a steep slope.

She had shaken her head several times during the journey home. It would not do good to let herself wallow in shame, when the inability to hide her shame from her father was what had kept her away from home for so long.

Trixie remembered the sunset that had begun to form as she finally came into the outskirts of Whinnychester, her methodical canter turning into an excited trot as the smell of wheat tickled her nose. Hues of pinks, yellows and oranges dueled it out with one another, a natural beauty that had once inspired Trixie in fillyhood to poetry, albeit a passion that had been quickly ditched. It was strange, but that sunset was the image that would always come to mind when she recalled that fateful evening.

“Bella? Is that you?”

She paused, thoughts of getting home to her father dashed for the sake of social niceties. “Yes, Mr. Star?” Trixie asked the red-furred Earth pony who had stopped in front of her on the road. It had only taken a few seconds for her to recognise him. Morning Star had been her neighbor when she lived in Whinnychester, and while Trixie had taken one diminutive of her birth name for her personal identity, Morning Star had been one of the villagers who had always used a different nickname for her. Trixie wanted to sit down on her haunch but abstained, knowing that if she took pressure off her back hooves for only a few minutes, it would be very uncomfortable to walk the last few minutes to her father’s household.

A sad look passed the Earth pony’s face, and Trixie ever-so-slightly tensed, feeling the stirring of a complex pot of emotions. Morning Star was the village doctor, preferring to be called Mister in idle conversation, but he was also the focal point of the town’s gossip network. If you so much as swiped one of Miss Scone’s cooling pastries off her kitchen windowsill, Morning Star probably knew about it.

And right now he was feeling sadness, guilt, a little bit of anger, and a strong dash of something Trixie could only ever identify as resignation.

Morning Star paused for a long moment, surveying her face for a long second, before sighing. “You’ve been gone too long. News never reached you, did it? Your father is missing, Bella, and he may be dead.”

She almost completely froze in place, only her rising hackles interrupting the picture still of a horrified mare. Split-second compartmentalising of her rising panic from the rest of her mental state honed by a life of showmareship allowed her to speak again. “What...what happened?” Her voice cracked, and she mentally cursed as her control started to slip, unshed tears struggling to be let free.

Morning Star shook his head. “An Equestrian Army patrol came into town, and they used a spell to check all the villagers for changelings. They found a changeling posing as your father. It attempted to run away when the patrol tried to interrogate it.” He stood up on his hind legs to pull Trixie in close, hugging her hard. “I’m so sorry Trixie. They tried to capture it to find Chisel’s whereabouts, but one of their spells accidentally killed it, and we haven’t been able to find your father since.”

This time there was no effort to hold back the tears as she embraced the hug Morning Star offered.


Wooden Chisel was presumed dead by the village of Whinnychester, but only the wandering blue mare who was his daughter knew it for a fact. It wasn’t due to a magic spell which Trixie could have used to divine this truth, but because the changeling had never impersonated anypony.

As a race of pony-sized beings looking like a hybrid between an equine and a beetle, capable of impersonating perfectly the appearance of any species close in size, the changelings were a host of contradictions. Even a few years after their existence was exposed on a wide scale following a failed invasion attempt, the general pony population knew precious little about them. They could match the size, texture and voice of any they wished to replace. A mucus they excreted was often used to cocoon those they replaced. They thrived off the emotions of other species, primarily love directed at those whom the changelings appeared to be, using it as their main source of sustenance in place of food and water.

Trixie knew many more details. Changelings were capable of coexisting with ponies who knew whom they were. Her mother had been one of those ponies. And changeling-pony couples were also capable of having foals, with the mare gestating as normal. Her mother, September Midsummer, again had been one of those ponies, giving birth to a filly named Bellatrix Midsummer. A male changeling could sire a pony. Her father, Wooden Chisel, had been one of those changelings.

Changeling-pony hybrids were incredibly rare, however, with Wooden Chisel once telling Trixie there might be a couple dozen alive at any time. While there were more couples than that, offspring were less common, due to the pony transformation imperfection of being nominally sterile. It took, from what a red-faced Chisel had once told Trixie when asked about this, an incredible amount of energy to bridge the special divide and temporarily be virile, energy that was typically only accumulated through many months of cohabitation with a trusting pony partner. And although it was rare for male changeling female pony couples to conceive, it was basically impossible the other way around, due to the energy requirements a female changeling would need to host a foal for many months. It was something only a queen might have access to, and no Changeling queen would expend that much energy for the sake of bearing a foal the pony way.

As a hybrid, however, Trixie had little to worry about. The most invasive medical examination would not show a single difference between her and any other pony, and changeling detection spells would return a negative. She was only a hybrid magically, able to feed off of emotions to a reduced extent. However, she lacked the ability to transform like a changeling altogether, only capable of physical alterations through unicorn magic.

Changelings were capable of using all three subspecies of pony magic, and so in turn, Trixie was lightly capable of working with both the earth and the heavens, her long travels made less stressful as the earth sung to her with every pitter-patter of her hooves, rain and wind rarely bothering her in the less weather-managed expanses between towns. She had wondered sometimes whether her flair for illusions was something that came from having a changeling for a father who could transform, or all her, but lacked the sample size of unicorn hybrid offspring. At the time she had shrugged the thought off; she had never been a scholarly mare anyways.

It was all this and more that Trixie considered as she stood in front of her father’s gravestone. Wooden Chisel had prepaid for the plot, setting it next to the gravestone of his wide, Trixie’s mother, September Midsummer. Neither had expected it would be up so soon. One of the great tragedies of the world was that despite their graves being next to one another, husband and wife would never be buried close. September had been lowered into the ground here in a casket in one of Trixie’s lowest days. A changeling was not fit to bury in a pony graveyard, his body burned and the ashes spread into the nearest river, a custom ponies thought changelings followed from a rumour that had once spread around.

The rumour was actually partially true, but Trixie knew her father would have wished to follow pony tradition in this case. For once in her life, Trixie wished that the villagers would have realised her father’s suspect colour scheme as a pony, black fur with an ashen-grey mane and sea-blue eyes, so close to what the changelings of her father’s hive resembled. But dead stallions told no tales, and Trixie didn’t even have the chance to say goodbye.

And so she found herself hovering over Wooden Chisel’s grave, lacking his body.

In the minutes and hours following Morning Star’s revelation, Trixie thought she had cried enough tears for her lifetime. The emptiness of the building her family had called home hadn’t been enough to renew her tears, but the sight of her father’s gravestone next to her mother’s left her chest wracked with choking sobs, the fur of her cheeks drenched with trickling tears. Trixie’s mother had died when she was young, but her father had always seemed like an immovable object. She regretted that she had not heard of the Changeling invasion as soon as it happened, having been stuck on a rock farm where they were always six months behind the rest of the world. Otherwise, she may have been able to visit him one last time before she made the life-changing decision to put on that Amulet.

Sniffing to herself some more, Trixie blew her nose out, wiping the mucus on the grass, before looking back at the gravestone.

Despite his name, Wooden Chisel was capable of carving more materials than just wood, and had created his own grave, leaving only his death date for another pony to put in. The hammer and chisel he had adopted as a Cutie Mark were engraved in right under his name, a far cry from the more elaborate affair he had created for his wife.

Here Lies Wooden Chisel
Loving Husband and Father

The epitaph mirrored his wife’s, but Wooden Chisel also had his own motto, the last thing engraved in the stone as if it were to be his last will and testament. It seemed generic enough to the casual observer. Trixie knew it was his feelings on his choice to leave the hive and the consequence that came of it, finding love in a pony.

Who Dares, Wins

Trixie didn’t feel very daring at all right now.


Trixie didn’t remember much of the months that followed her father’s death.

It was as if the part of her that retained functional memories was a black hole, sucking in the glittering starlight of all that had been good about her mother and father.

Later on, after the pain and hurt had faded, Trixie would admit she was fortunate she had found out about Wooden Chisel’s tragic end in Whinnychester, and not received the news elsewhere. While her parent’s homestead could bring about raw, painful flashbacks of her time as a foal playing with her parents, it also alleviated the gnawing ache that wormed its way through her heart. Furthermore, the villagers of Whinnychester made the perfect support network, willing to provide her a shoulder to cry on, all while remembering their own fond stories of September Midsummer and Wooden Chisel.

Though she moped, she moped while tugging a plow down one of the many farms, the exertion a welcome distraction from the festering blister of heartache that threatened to burst open at any moment. Trixie may not have been born an Earth Pony, but the egalitarian culture of Whinnychester considered all those willing to pull their weight as honourary Earth Ponies.

Her house had been empty of inhabitants for several months, only occasionally checked in on, maintained for the day the prodigal daughter would return home. The Whinnychesterites had partially tidied up, but left the place partly undone for Trixie to decide how to restore it. When Wooden Chisel the Changeling had been found out, the villagers had ransacked the September household, looking to see if they could locate Wooden Chisel the Pony. One of the more enterprising Pegasi had thought to measure the dimensions of each room and realised the existence of the family’s secret panic room. When the ponies were unable to find the entrance they tore open a wall, saddened that there was no cocoon for them to tear apart. Trixie didn’t begrudge them for the action.

And that was the worst part. She couldn’t blame anypony. Even the Royal Guard who had inadvertently killed her father was anonymous, his spell one of several that plausibly may have struck the death blow. As far as anypony knew, Wooden Chisel was a pony. That would remain the case, lest the eye of the state or the Third Estate be turned on Trixie herself. Trixie desperately wished to be able to extol the life of her mother and father, to tell other people who they had been and what they had done. She still could, but without the unique detail of his being a Changeling, a great part of the story was lost.

But Trixie knew her father wouldn’t have wanted her to expose herself. Morning Star the doctor, who had given her multiple check-ups when she was young; Blueberry Scone the baker, who had snuck her more than the occasional treat when she was just a filly; Red Fife the farmer, who always had a decent-paying task of manual labour available for a unicorn who could pull her weight both with body and spell; Einkorn the slate-furred Earth Pony playcolt, one of many of Trixie’s fillyhood friends and one of few who remained in Whinnychester, who she had had a number of flings with when younger; and many more were all her friends and neighbors. They would all help her get over her loss, and Trixie knew she could confide in them. Except when it came to the truth of her paternal heritage.

It shouldn’t have been such a sticking point for her. Her father had all but abandoned his culture to live among ponies. But it was.

Nothing tore at Trixie’s heart more than when she had to send letters to her ‘aunts and uncles’, bar one who worked for the Royal Guard on the possibility a mail-screener found it suspect, telling them of Wooden Chisel’s death.


It was a clear day out. The road leading west out of Whinnychester wound around several times as it dropped and climbed, but Trixie could see several thousand hoofsteps out to the horizon. She could do this.

Trixie took a deep breath, and summoned her spirits. One step, two step, three step, four step, she moved forward counting one hoof at a time, keeping her eyes lowered and occupied on the dirt road, and away from the distance.

It didn’t work. Within minutes, Trixie felt her hooves growing heavier, as if gravity was stronger the further out she went.

She burst into tears. Following the Alicorn Amulet Trixie had been prodded into going to see a psychologist about any issues she might have developed between the rock farm and the magical possession. It was also suggested to her that if she was returning to performing, it would do well to stay ahead of any mental problems she might develop as a result of constantly being on the road and never staying in any place too long to create connections with other ponies.

At the time, Trixie had hoof-waved away the warning by the psychologist that one big incident could push her over the edge. It seemed she owed the doctor an apology for ignoring his warnings. Whinnychester may have been where her parents died, but it was also where Wooden Chisel and September Midsummer had lived. Somehow, she just couldn’t seem to bear to leave, and her body turned against her when she attempted otherwise.

Sighing, Trixie turned around, looking down the hill she had worked her way up, back into the valley that hosted Whinnychester. She made to trot back down, but paused. Looking back, she saw the moon setting in the western sky, providing little wisps of moonlight even as the sun was rising in the east. Her own Cutie Mark had come to her under the gaze of that same moon. Someday, Trixie would chase the night sky. It appeared tonight would not be that night.


I’ve been thinking a lot lately. What is the nature of this world? We’re born, we live, we die and are returned to the aether? I can’t say I’m anywhere near as intelligent as some of the ponies and griffons who have lived in the past, and I’ll never be as long-lived as a dragon. I’m not cut-out out for that type of deep thinking. Aristrotles formed the groundwork for our modern life today, and I can’t even understand half what he says. From what I can understand of some of his successors who have also pondered the same questions I ask myself now, we should accept our individual lives as a fleeting moment in the passing of a greater whole.

But I don’t want to be a fleeting footnote in history. I don’t want the only proof I ever lived to vanish, as records aren’t duplicated and are lost to time, as my name and life engraved into stone are worn away by wind and water. I’ve always felt that I should have been able to do better. Yet life has always seemed to thrown me around like the wild waves of the undiscerning oceans. First I had to drop out of school, then I lost my mother. Next I lost my reputation, then my sanity and pride, and last my father. Wandering the roads of Equestria and beyond soothed that ache, but even that freedom has been denied me now.

I...perhaps it’s time I make an opportunity of this instead of continuing to merely exist.

Author's Note:

So what exactly happened in the four years since finding out her father died to make Trixie like what she was when confronted by Princess Twilight Sparkle?

I know. Because I'm the author. The rest of you will have to stay tuned and find out, in the first full arc of this story: New Moon.

“Heh. It’s not common but some ponies will call a new moon a dead moon. Dead Moon sounds like a good name for me once I get caught.”

Greatest Outdoor Show in Equestria in Coltgary is a reference to the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth in the Calgary Stampede.